Feeding the Emotional Body

The job of the emotional body is the same as the physical one: to absorb what it needs based on what you feed it and to eliminate that which does not serve it. If you don’t keep your filtration system healthy enough to get rid of waste, your heart ends up having to work double-time to process the excess poo you’re feeding it.

Feed your emotional body the nourishment it needs so it can get the job done. Avoid toxins. Keep the filters clean so the ego doesn’t get all red and puffy. Don’t make your heart process poo.

Setting Sail in Uncharted Waters

This blog post is for a wonderful, brilliant and courageous woman setting sail into a future she is unsure of. So many of us have decided to make real changes (big ones) in 2012, I think it's a good lesson for us all.

Moving into uncharted territory is terrifying, even on a good day. You wake up and set sail and the weather is brilliant and the horizon is clear but when it comes down to it you can't ignore that your entire being is rattled with the fact that you really don't know what's around the bend. It's ok. That's just how it is when you have to pioneer, even when you're only pioneering your own life. So don't beat yourself up if you're not always feeling absolutely positive about what's going on and if it's all going to work. In order for us to have absolute knowledge of outcome we have to take the paths most traveled and if we wanted to do that we wouldn't be....us. Being unsure is part of the deal here. That's normal.

What causes people to defeat themselves is to give into the fear. Fear can drive you to worry a bit, then it can drive you to lose sleep, then it can drive you to become insecure to the point of lashing out at others, then it can drive you to simply quit. You can look at the uncharted path before you and say, "You know what......never mind." Turn the boat around and take another path - that's always your right. But to move forward, to pray, to ask for divine assistance and the faith of those depending on you, to push yourself out of your comfort zone and into something you can't deny yourself...well...that opens a door of magic within that changes you forever. And if you ask me about my own adventures, even if I fail it's worth it just to open that door. I raise my glass to those who are  scared and moving forward anyway. Cheers.

Look at the move Tim and I are making. I wish I could tell you I'm not scared to death cuz I know deep down I am and I know it's probably gonna get worse long before it gets better. We know what we want, but we don't really know exactly how it's going to be. It's uncharted territory. There are people on the wings cheering us on and there are people who will never understand why we're leaving. It definitely isn't the first time people look at Tim and/or myself and think we're crazy, rash, naive, foolish, etc. But, I just can't bring myself to care if those people get it or not. What I really care about is creating a life for myself that reflects who I am on the inside and I don't feel like this city offers my heart all that it desires to grow and expand. We have a pretty good plan going and we've been taking steps towards the move for a year now - emotionally I've been taking steps even longer than that. What keeps me going is impenetrable faith. I've set my sails up a hundred times so I know that I may not always end up where I think I'm going to, but I will always end up somewhere better than I was when I started the journey.

We steer our ship, angels hold our compass, God is the water beneath us and the wind in our sails. How could any of us POSSIBLY go wrong?

I have one other angle that you may find helpful. Over the holidays I was in NM for about a week when I started projecting on my move and feeling lonely for the people in my life who really GET me. There's a seriously small population of people like that in NM and I don't know a single soul in our final destination of Colorado. Though I believe I'll love the new friends I make and plan on keeping all my old friends, this particular evening I was doing a lot of self-doubting and feeling uncharacteristically sorry for myself. I was on my nightly walk from the main house to the small guest house I'll be moving into in about 11 weeks. It was, as usual out there, a dark and chilly night and I looked up as I always do to marvel at the gagillion stars visible from Middle of Nowhere, Northern NM. I could actually see the Milky Way plastered above us in a huge bright strip. And I thought to myself, "Well, shit. In a hundred years I'll be dead and none of this will matter." That is a true story on all accounts.

Thank you, Mrs. Marshall, for helping me put my own journey in perspective. I'm thankful you're on the waters with me.

Simply Put

Be happy with what you already have. You may build upon yourself with experiences with people, things, and goals. But a bee and all of nature has all it will ever need, and have been quite content with that for centuries.


Quote by Diana Jeong, photographer, writer, black belt, friend, woman extraordinaire.

Perfection

It is a wonderful and freeing thing to realize you are perfect.

It is a wonderful and freeing thing to realize you are imperfect.

A Brilliant Statement On Abundance

Grandmaster Maria Baird was teaching one of her Manifesting Me seminars on dreams and desires when she said something that struck me as brilliant. She said, “Once basic needs are met, abundance is an experience that comes from utilizing our gifts in rewarding ways.”

Americans are big on stuff. I live in Los Angeles. People here are really into their stuff. It’s the syndrome of, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” In fact, people are so incredibly focused on what they don't have, they can rarely see and appreciate what they do have. Even when (by my standards) they have A LOT.

I like stuff and all, but I’ve spent years striving for and collecting things just to find out that what really gives me a kick is helping people feel better about their lives. When you are doing what you love to do because you love to do it and because you’re good at it, it’s what comes from that action that feels so good. Not the stuff you buy with it.

Focus on gratitude. Forget consumerism. Forget stuff. Redefine what is really and truly important to you that isn’t material. Then build on it. You will know abundance like you never have before.

Felix Felicis

I've been thinking the last few days about Felix Felicis, aka Liquid Luck, found by the rest of the Harry Potter nerds on the planet in book (or movie) 6. There's a big Quiddich match and Ron is rightfully nauseous and nervous because...well...he's not a very consistent player and he knows it. At breakfast, Hermione spots Harry slipping something into Ron's drink and as Harry puts the bottle of Liquid Luck into his pocket Ron immediately knows what Harry has done for Ron and for the Griffindor Quiddich team. Ron gulps down his lucky pumpkin juice feeling like a million Galleons, plays uncharacteristically well and gets carried off the field as the game champ. It's not until later that evening that Harry divulges to Hermione that he hadn't actually slipped anything at all into Ron's drink - he only pretended to. Ron played his best game by his own devices and never needed Liquid Luck to do it. He never needed anything more than a nice healthy dose of courage and faith.
The way Felix Felicis worked when Harry actually took it is it sort of guided him. He'd get a feeling that something was just the right thing to do and he'd go for it without question. It led him to a great success and changed the future of the world and the rest, of course, is magical history.
There's the internal voice in us all that says "That looks fun - maybe I'll do that!" Then you've got the other voice giving you a nudge-nudge-wink-wink and in no uncertain terms says, "Listen to that other voice and you're gonna totally screw up." In a way, it seems the potion blocks out the voice that says, "Naaahhh....better not go out on a limb."
I've asked a couple of people what they'd do if they could drink some Liquid Luck and, predictably, they say they'd go get a lottery ticket. But then what? Now you're a millionaire, great. Would you still avoid the things that you think you've got no chance at? Or would you finally talk to the person you've been crushing on for years? Would you apply for that job or start that business? Would you make a phone call you've been dreading? Would you get on the 405 freeway at 5pm on a Friday?
What would you do today, tomorrow, the next day, if you knew no matter what that luck was on your side?

A Big Dream

There is a very cool, wonderful man named Mark Hoog whom I had the pleasure of meeting. When I was introduced to Mark he had published a number of inspirational children's books with Growing Field including a book called "Letters From Katrina" which I highly recommend you check out.

I attended one of Mark's speaking engagements where he told a story about speaking to three groups of kids. The first group was an elementary school age range. Mark said to the group, "Ok, I want you to raise your hand if you have a big dream and a big goal to support that dream." Pretty much every kid in the room raised their hand and Mark was pleased and not surprised. A couple days later he spoke to a group of middle school kids and he asked the exact same question, only this time less than half the room raised their hand. This was surprising. You can imagine his shock and dismay when he asked the high school students and about 5 people in the entire auditorium raised their hands to say "I've got a big dream!"

I've thought about this story a lot over the last several years.

Now, I feel there are many contributing factors to this, and I think hormones is one of them. In the average high school it becomes outrageously uncool to raise your hand for anything unless, of course, you're already dubbed The Smart Kid. The few kids who raised their hands when Mark spoke were also the kids who weren't afraid to raise their hand when they knew the answer in Geometry or AP English. However, I also think that when kids are young we "humor" them, and as they get older we want to be "honest" and "realistic". When a six year old says, "I want to be an astronaut," we say, "Great!" When a sixteen year old says it, we ask about their grades in math and tell them about how impossible it will be for them to be what they want to be. For most of us, by the time those 10 years pass we've had so many dreams shot down that it's no wonder we give up and lose the race before we run it. We do and become what's expected of us by others which is all too often a shortcoming of who we could've been and who we really are.

I'm going to take some time today to think about my dreams. I know for a fact that there are many that I started and consciously and fairly decided against. I definitely don't want to be a wedding photographer and I know that because I tried it. However, if there are dreams that were squelched by others or that I was just plain afraid of, gosh darnit, I'm going to re-hatch them and I encourage you to do the same.

When someone asks if we have a big dream and a big goal to support that dream, I want us ALL to raise our hands, I want us ALL to be already living some of them and I want us ALL to be on our way to more. If you don't know how to do that, read a book, take a seminar, go within and study yourself, contact me and I'll help you.